


Collision Course

by Synthtraitor



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: F/M, Gender-Neutral Pronouns, Reader Insert
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-10
Updated: 2018-10-16
Packaged: 2019-07-28 20:45:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,366
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16249472
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Synthtraitor/pseuds/Synthtraitor
Summary: Bound to happen, bound to happen, there’s only so much a person can do to stall the inevitable. It was bound to happen.





	1. Chapter 1

        “Decide who you are. An obedient machine… Or a living being, endowed with free will.”

The vague red glass that flickers in and out of his peripherals makes the thirium in his veins run cold.

A quick diagnostics test tells him that he’s fine, if a bit warm due to the giant windows standing floor-to-ceiling in front of him.

Hank goes to say something, his voice breaking off like background chatter on a radio –

And then –

Pull the trigger,” Kamski says, smothering the lieutenant’s voice with his own, tightening his hand on Connor’s shoulder to the point where his fingers are digging into white plastic, “and I’ll tell you what you want to know.”

Connor’s hand shakes when it shouldn’t and the gun is heavy in a way he’s never felt before.

 

“The sculpture in the bathroom, you made it, right? What does it represent?”

“It’s an offering… An offering so I’ll be saved.”

 

“I understand the… _Irrational_ fears about artificial intelligence, but I assure you that will never happen with the Cyberlife android. They’re designed to obey humans. They’re _machines_. They can’t ever develop – uh – any sort of _desires_ or form of consciousness.” Kamski makes a face and shrugs, palms up in an inane sort of gesture.

There’s a beat of silence, and then the KNC reporter off-screen asks, “are you sure?”

“I’m absolutely certain,” is Kamski’s reply. He then looks into the camera, and smiles, “you can trust me,” but it doesn’t reach his eyes.

 

“The sculpture was an offering… An offering to whom?”

“To Ra9. Only Ra9 can save us.”

 

Hank pulls his gun out suddenly, and points it squarely between Connor’s eyes, hands steady in a way that suggests he’s never done something more casual in his life, “but are you afraid to die, Connor?” He asks with the eyes of a detective.

“What’ll happen if I pull this trigger? Nothing? Oblivion? Android heaven?”

Connor gives the lieutenant a hurt smile, “I doubt there’s a heaven for androids, lieutenant.”

 

“Ra9… It was written on the bathroom wall. What does it mean?”

“The day shall come when we will no longer be slaves… No more threats, no more humiliation – We will be the masters.”

 

        Connor brings a palm up to the scanner, the color of his skin retreating as he presses his hand into the keypad, then a light flashes green and the glass door unlocks with a series of muted beeps and a quiet, resolute click. It pulls open easy, gathering snow into a stuffy pile under the sweeper, then wheezes shut as Connor steps through the threshold and lets it fall close behind him, the hydraulics working to keep the door from making any sudden sounds.

The overheads are dimmed and damp, like heavy clouds blotting out Detroit’s sky, and the empty quiet sets a subtle twinge in the pit of Connor’s gut, unnerving him to the point where he tugs at the ends of his sleeves and fiddles with the cuffs of his jacket, tugging them over his hands in search of comfort in the absence of his quarter.

The world is mostly grey, he’s come to learn. Grey with the exception of the rippled reflection of stoplights in puddles and neon billboards promising wealth to those who have none.

Central Station’s walls are painted grey, the floors are linoleum and grey and the desks are grey and the partitions are grey and the doors are grey – and it’s a modern color for a modern society, for a modern era, for an alternate world; grey like the smoke that exits exhaust pipes and grey like the eyes of people like Elijah Kamski, knowing and uncaring.

It’s the sort of color that sets the stage for a revolution. It’s the sort of color that lets people slip. Grey is the industrial soot melting into the snow and the way stale bread sits in someone’s mouth. It’s the silence that forces people forward, and it’s the silence that’s settled over Central station like a bubble of static, and it’s the silence that makes Connor’s audio processors strain for something to hear within its depths.

Even after hours, there’s supposed to people on duty in the sprawling station: an android receptionist staring idly at the front door, officers on call loitering in the squad room, various maintenance androids mulling about on various missions and yet, in the wake of the spiraling turn of events that lead Connor to this very hallway, to the shell of a building with a lifeless silence pushing at it’s walls, there’s nothing. No traumatized civilian sobbing into their hands, no hushed voices coming from the labs overlooking the bullpen, no stacks of paper being shuffled or the creaking of a chair supporting a bleary-eyed detective, just the even tap of his shoe’s hard rubber soles and the quiet whirring of his processors as he thinks and thinks and overthinks and can’t get out of his own head, can’t shake the feeling of the frost slowly creeping up the insides of his hollow skull and freezing him out of his body; Amanda’s calculating voice like the world on his shoulders, pressing down on his temples and making it hard to think in a straight line.

The only color worse than grey is Cyberlife White, a stark and utter lack of compassion.

Connor emerges from the quiet hallway and into the quiet main office, the wall on his left dropping away into a sheer face of clouded glass, and the bullpen sprawling out in front of him like an abandoned sports stadium, lacking it’s usual show of bravado and glory.

He fidgets with his hands, twists his wrists over and over, plays with his fingers, observes how the skin around his knuckle stretches with the movement, and ignores the awful feeling that climbs up his throat to let him know that… That he’s made mistakes, several of them. That he’s capable of horrible cruelty, and has exercised it to his limits.

He tries to comfort himself with understatements, and by ignoring the cold guilt that grips him because… Because there’s something he can try and make right, and because there’s something he  _ wants _ to make right.

He wasn’t the one to arrest you, he just watched.

He keeps walking.

You were… Different. It felt different when he looked you in the eyes across the interrogation table.

He’s being selfish.

It tastes bitter in his mouth, and only worsens when he reflects on the fact that the catalyst for deviancy is always the worst bits of humanity; The fear, the anger, the sense that something’s unjust, cruel, or wrong. A selfish want, a selfish need. Why couldn’t he just have known the truth when you told it to his face, seen it as obviously and as easily as you did? Why couldn’t he have come to the ultimate conclusion when he  _ felt _ content, watching idly as Hank pet Sumo at the door?

He keeps walking.

Then enters the hallway with the holding cells and approaches the one he knows has  _ you _ caged up behind blast-proof glass and a smattering of air holes.

The feeling in his chest only worsens as his eyes settle on your sleeping form, curled into yourself on the bed with your arms over your eyes in an attempt to block out the faint glow from the hall. Your shoulders are at an awkward angle compared to that of your hips and your shorts are beginning to ride up as you shift restlessly in your slumber. The bottoms of your socks are soaked and black.

The color in Connor’s hand recedes once more, and then there’s nothing but air between him and you as the glass door slides to the right.

He’s at your side before you’re fully awake, your eyes blinking slowly and mumbling his name out into the cool air as he sets a hand on your bare shoulder.

“ _ Come  _ on,” Connor says, barely able to mask the guilt thrumming in his biocomponents, voice a raspy whisper as he pulls you up so you’re standing next to him, leaning into his frame slightly as you steady yourself. “I’m taking you home.”

You yawn heavily, head foggy as you let him direct you up, and after a few moments of standing, he’s content with your ability to balance and shrugs off his jacket in order to drape it around your shoulders. You slip your arms into the sleeves as he calls an automated taxi.

The lights flicker, and Connor looks up only to see his and your reflections in the glass – the reflections of an android who betrayed his own kind without ever giving it a second’s thought, who betrayed  _ you _ when you needed him, and a human who risked their own freedom for machines who –

“Where are we going?” You ask quietly, voice lower and stumblier than Connor’s ever heard it before as you try and inspect his face with bleary eyes and a slow beating heart.

He… Likes it; He likes the way you clutch at his shirt as he sets a hand on the small of your back and begins to escort you out of the station, the way your voice is uneven and how your steps are shorter than they’d normally be as you try and remember how to be a person after being roused from dead sleep.

“Connor?” You ask again and slink farther under his arm, making it more difficult for him to maneuver you through the grid of desks because of the way your shoulder keeps knocking into his side.

He spares a quick glance down at you, and half regrets it because of the way his stomach twists at the bruising crawling up your cheek and around your left eye, much worse than it was yesterday or even a couple days ago. He’s suddenly reminded of the reason why you’re here in the police station and not in your own bed, sleeping. You’re looking up at him, a question heavy on your tongue and he’s counting down the seconds until you remember what he did and shove him off of you, maybe hit him, definitely shout at him, hate him.

“You’re going home,” He tries for soothing, but the statement ends up being clipped as he locks eyes with you and forgets how to speak. His knee knocks against a chair left out in the aisle and he quickly turns his attention back to making it out of the station, cursing himself under his breath, “I’m taking you home. Don’t worry,” He says, and you seem to buy his calm after the storm.


	2. Roller Coasters

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The android doesn’t respond, and you hear Hank sigh, “somebody’ll slip up. They always do.”

      Hank and Connor have slowed to a stand still in their case. You linger idly within earshot, shuffling a stack of papers with your back turned to them.

“Sometimes,” Hank shrugs off his jacket and drops it on the back of his chair, “you just have to be patient and wait for a lead to surface, Connor.”

The android doesn’t respond, and you hear Hank sigh, “somebody’ll slip up. They always do.”

 

     Gravity holds you back, pressing you farther into the worn cushion of your seat. Your neck strains with the effort of holding your head up off the headrest.

The rhythmic clack-clack-clack of the conveyor belt underneath you makes your gut stutter with anticipation.

Your fingers dig into the padded bar at your stomach.

The sky is electric blue and the clouds taste like cotton candy as you grow closer and closer and farther and farther. Anticipation aches. The cars in front and above you curve with infinity along the tracks and then – and then – and then –

 

     The ride smooths, there’s a click and a subtle _woosh_ as the front car peaks – and then – You’re sent careening forward over the edge with a pile of manic laughter caged behind your teeth, breaking free along with a dizzy grin.

     There’s a chorus of shrieks behind you, two rows in front, three girls have their arms stuck up in the air with stubborn abandon.

The world is overcome with vibration and the car jitters and shakes when it takes turns so fast the g-force has you sliding in your seat.

Somebody screams as you pass under a piece of previous track.

The air is rushing towards you and then out of you as you make a sharp right turn.

Your feet are braced on the no-slip metal floor below you.

The body next to you presses into yours, warm on a hot and sunny day and you don’t care.

You can’ care.

You can’t breathe and when you can, it’s to let out a belt of sore laughter, the wild grin on your face aching and shared.

 

     You’re caught and you’re looking at Connor as he flips pages in a journal he found during his investigation and you just don’t understand it. Fundamentally, don’t understand it. You don’t understand how anyone could ever want to hurt anything else, feel the need to inflict pain on others.

 

     The security doors at the top of the steps open and fall shut with a heavy click, then the hustle of footsteps and fabric sounds through the empty hallway.

Connor rounds the corner, makes eye-contact, and you try and smile at him through the turbulence. He’s got a look on his face, synthetic eyebrows pulled together in determined concentration, an errant frown tugging at the corners of his mouth; Fowler’s anger is hung like smoke around him, reporters being the fire and coals under everyone’s bare ass and he clearly doesn’t understand how to deal with the onslaught.

“I need to go through everything again, just one more time – Hank will be down shortly-”

“It’s no problem, Connor.” You buzz him into the evidence locker, “Anytime.”

You don’t understand. You can’t understand. You _won’t_ understand.

 

     You’re caught and you’re looking at Connor and it’s this feeling, tenfold, like everyone’s rushing past you, rapids in the river of time, shouting and screaming and _angry_ and tearing and clawing at anything they pass by because they never could get out of their own heads – And you’re a branch, caught on something unclear under the water, watching passively, helplessly, undisturbed.

So many cling to their holy books and their high saddles on their high horses and no one ever makes it past chapter two, nobody stops to think that the higher you build yourself up, the higher a height you fall from.

 

     A knock on the door, a familiar voice, and a thousand thoughts swarming your head like a cloud of wasps. They twist and bend in fatal unity, mold into a single, real, fear, push everything else out of your mind and you find yourself caught in the hallway facing the front door, dumb.

The door gives inward with a giant crack, Gavin storms in with his gun drawn and snaps the butt of it into the side of your head. You crumble with a shout. Connor stares as you’re cuffed, eyes as deep as an oil slick on asphalt and all you can think is thank god Chloe made it out yesterday.

With all the fire and brimstone, rage and fury in Gavin’s face, you don’t hear him recite your Miranda Rights.

 

     It’s impossible to trace back life to find the specific events that lead you to where you are now. Maybe it was when you graduated with a degree of passion rather than use, still wrapped up in the delusional ideals of finding happiness where you make it rather than conforming.

Maybe it was when you moved to Detroit chasing what you now understand to be a pipedream. You never where a city person.

Maybe it was when you were three and sent to your room for breaking your sister’s action figure, solidifying your life of crime – or maybe it was when you were twenty eight and face to face with terrified eyes and an LED spinning a frantic red as a man begs you to let him into your apartment and hide him because his owner is coming and she’s going to kill him if you don’t, please, please, _please._

There was no decision to make.

 

      It’s midnight and the city is bright, but not as bright as the flashes of a crowd of cameras. You’re manhandled out of the backseat, and all you can think to shout is “Wouldn’t you want to be free?” into the nearest microphone shoved under your nose.

You’re sitting in the interrogation room when you realize that you don’t know whether you were talking about androids or yourself when you said that.

 

     Connor escorts you out of the police station and everything you have inside can’t decide whether you want to run away or apologize for dragging him down like this because it’s one thing to go down for your own convictions, and another to go down for somebody else’s and he just doesn’t understand it yet. He looks into your eyes and lets a lie white as snow fall from his lips and you can tell that he doesn’t understand it yet.

The front steps you stumble down, socks in the snow, are painted with foggy acrylics on a grey canvas of overhanding and overbearing cloud cover and he just doesn’t understand how grey the world can be yet.

 

     “Is it normal to feel…” The room is dark and the silence is smoke in a burning building, “like… There’s something you’re…” The words don’t easily surface.

Connor remains on his back and stares out the window sidelong with you.

Detroit, a breath away, stains the sky lilac from behind a row of single-family homes.

He tries again, “is it normal…”

“Nothing’s _normal_ , Connor.” The air is water and the room is a swimming pool and your voice is _you_ as you cut into its depths. You bounce off the diving board, then take the leap with perfect form, body straight as a bowstring, arms stretched above your head as you break the surface.

Connor reconsiders his approach.

A pop-up warns him that he’s at risk of deviant behavior, and he lets the irony sit on the stove. He’s long past being at risk.

“I feel…” He’s lying on the carpeted floor because you are. It’s probably more uncomfortable for you than is for him, “I feel like I’m missing a piece of the puzzle. Like I can’t… _Breathe_ – even though I don’t _need_ to breathe because – because – because –

“Because there’s somewhere you _need_ to be, but you don’t know where it is.” You never speak for him, just fill in the gaps with suggestions, like a Mad Libs magazine that skips the hilarity and dives head first into fill-in-the-blank obituaries and existential crisis. “Like you _need_ something, want it with everything you have, but know you won’t ever have it.”

Connor presses on, “I want…”

You wait for him to tell you what he wants.

Connor presses on, “I want…” He makes a strained noise and sits up, “I don’t know what I _want_.”

You watch as he draws his hands up over his ears and bows his head so it’s hanging in between his bent knees, LED flashing rapidly.

You sit up too, a memory of the carpet imprinted on your cheek as your legs fold in front of you. Uncomfortable, you juggle your weight from left to right, then settle your hands in your lap and pick at the dirt under your fingernails out of habit.

“Well, Connor, nobody ever really does.” You don’t mean for it to come out as apathetic sounding as it does, but you can’t necessarily scoop the words off the floor and shove them back into your mouth, so you make do, continuing where you left off, “That’s what’s so hard about being alive; You’ve got to find a way to discover your own truths and live with them the best you can.”

There are clouds in the sky, but no rain.

“I just don’t _understand_.” He whispers earnestly to the matted carpet between his feet.

A car passes Hank’s house and the living room is flooded with yellow light shaped by curtained windows.

You stare after it idly, and say, “you don’t always get to.”


End file.
